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Wednesday, October 26, 2016

For Republicans today, Trump is scarier than Goldwater. He is scarier because he resembles a double agent dreamed up by liberal screenwriters. He embodies almost every left-wing caricature of Republicans that Republicans despise.

He is a racist and a sexist — having refused to rent apartments to African-Americans, retweeted neo-Nazis, besmirched Muslims and Latinos and boastfully molested women. For years, Republicans have been frustrated by liberal sensitivity on race and gender. Comes now Trump, spewing bigotry.

He is also an unrepentant denier of reality. Do you remember that Al Franken wrote a jeremiad against conservatives called “Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”? I imagine the book’s title offends you. Yet it now feels like a preview of a candidate who almost every day makes immediately disprovable claims.

Trump likewise plays into the liberal narrative that the radical right verges on being anti-American. He has suggested our democracy is illegitimate and advocated jail for his opponent.

Finally, Trump displays a proud meanspiritedness about others’ struggles — a meanspiritedness that Democrats have long tried to link to Republican economic policy. He mocks parents who have lost a child, people with disabilities and prisoners of war. He relishes firing people.

Trump is so distinct that he has made this election unavoidably about him. If you vote for him, you can’t pass it off as voting for Supreme Court nominees. You will be voting for Donald Trump. You will be embracing those parodies of conservatism. - David Leonhardt, New York Times, Oct. 25, 2016

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Donald Trump made a lot of people more than a little nervous when, during Wednesday's third and final Presidential Debate, he refused to say if "he [would] accept the results of next month's election if he loses to Hillary Clinton."

Then, on Thursday in Ohio - in true Trump fashion - he backtracked, by saying “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.”

But Miami Beach attorney David Wieder is pretty sure Trump never intended to win the election.

Turns out this whole presidential campaign thing was part of a sinister plot hatched by Trump to get Hillary elected.

And Wieder has proof. He's gotten his hands on an advance copy of Trump's "concession speech" which will be delivered by Trump himself, the evening after the election.

First of all, I want to congratulate Hillary for winning the Presidency.
But I won the election. I am a WINNER, not a loser and here is why: I want all those blockheads who supported me not to make any trouble or claim that the election was rigged. It was designed by me to elect Hillary. I mean, wake up people. Do you think that some of the things I have said were not provocative enough to turn people off, especially women, who are of a lower mentality than men? They just do not have the stamina to figure out what I was doing.

I want everyone to know that I am really a Democrat. I was never a Republican.

I am an eastern elitist, believe me. Do you think that I live in a gold plated Trump tower apartment and have a gold plated jet because I like people who live in Des Moines or St Louis? They are suckers. Losers. Out of touch with how to get ahead. Most of these yokels would vote for me if I shot Paul Ryan. I am a patriot, believe me. I even display big American flags in my buildings right next to the TRUMP flag. I want everyone to know that there will be a Hillary victory party in all the Trump buildings not in foreclosure tonight to celebrate what I and I alone have accomplished. No one could have pulled this off except me, believe me. I won the whole thing. What a winner I am. If I invited Vladimir Putin, he would come. He loves me, just like all my other followers. Vlad told me what a winner I am.

I entered this race and demolished the 16 pinhead candidates who had the nerve to run against me in the primaries. They tried to be politically correct in selling their agenda for the wealthy. The base saw through them and embraced me. All those things I said about low energy Jeb and Little Marco were true. LOSERS! and John Kasich? He is phonier than a three-dollar bill. And how about Chris Christie who will soon go to jail, standing behind me like my puppet? He looked like an overfed beagle. The rest of them were a bunch of religious nut cases who want to get inside women's vaginas, but not successfully as I have. Who cares about abortion? I am pro choice. Just like my hot daughter Ivanka, whom I never dated, believe me.

I ran to show how bankrupt the GOP is and, believe me, I know about bankruptcies. The country had to put up with George W Bush, who invited the Iranians to take over the Middle East. And Condoleezza Rice? The worst secretary of state, much worse than Hillary, who is now my friend. Well Condi might have gotten into Augusta National, but never Trump National, get it? Well maybe now that I have revealed my true feelings of liberalism. I live in New York City, come on. After all she did go to college. And I heard she's a pretty good golfer. I heard she plays a pretty mean piano...lots of rhythm.

And how about my running mate Mike Pence, who says he is a Christian before he is a Republican and an American? He needs to get a hot date. Spends too much time in church. And what about those spineless losers Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell twisting themselves into pretzels when I revealed all that stuff about my sexual exploits. Sure, I groped a few women, but what's the difference? Bill Clinton was a fat kid from Arkansas who became President so he could get p***y. That is the whole point of being President, isn't it? I gave a lot of money to Bill and when I release my tax returns tomorrow, it will show that. I could have built the wall with my own funds, but every one knows that is dumb. Better to do it with OPM.

So do not worry, Hillary, I am now on your side again. You are a real fighter. You do not give up and I respect that. But you are only President-elect, because I paved the way. I am the real winner.

I made myself into a Trojan (forgive the expression, I do not use Trojans) horse to show how stupid the American public is. None of them read the failing New York Times, the New Yorker or the Washington Post. They can hardly read at all. I know all this because I did well at Wharton where I learned to play everyone for a sucker. And tuition was not even that high then. It increased my attention span to a full 30 seconds. And believe me, I am not looking for a cabinet position although I would make a great Secretary of the Treasury negotiating 10c on the dollar for government bond obligations. And all those freeloading NATO partners. I never intended to make them pay up for defense. I get a lot of guests in my hotels from those countries.

So now it is time to pull together as Americans, respect the fact that I uncloaked the Republican fraud, and stand behind our new President. I am a patriot, believe me. Even though I will not be President, my face should be on the wall on the Rio Grande, just like Mt Rushmore. I want to talk to Hillary about that.

So my fellow Americans, God bless America. Let's get together behind Hillary, and come back to my casinos, my hotels and my golf courses. Business has fallen off a bit and I might have to declare another bankruptcy or even worse, lose my tax write offs.

We have only one President and she is all of our President., but I am responsible for her election. I won.

In the most traumatic government upheaval of the Watergate crisis, President Nixon yesterday discharged Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.

The President also abolished the office of the special prosecutor and turned over to the Justice Department the entire responsibility for further investigation and prosecution of suspects and defendants in Watergate and related cases.

Shortly after the White House announcement, FBI agents sealed off the offices of Richardson and Ruckelshaus in the Justice Department and at Cox's headquarters in an office building on K Street NW.

An FBI spokesman said the agents moved in "at the request of the White House."

Agents told staff members in Cox's office they would be allowed to take out only personal papers. A Justice Department official said the FBI agents and building guards at Richardson's and Ruckelshaus' offices were there "to be sure that nothing was taken out."

Richardson resigned when Mr. Nixon instructed him to fire Cox and Richardson refused. When the President then asked Ruckelshaus to dismiss Cox, he refused, White House spokesman Ronald L. Ziegler said, and he was fired. Ruckelshaus said he resigned.

Finally, the President turned to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, who by law becomes acting Attorney General when the Attorney General and deputy attorney general are absent, and he carried out the President's order to fire Cox. The letter from the President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned.

These dramatic developments were announced at the White House at 8:25 p.m. after Cox had refused to accept or comply with the terms of an agreement worked out by the President and the Senate Watergate committee under which summarized material from the White House Watergate tapes would be turned over to Cox and the Senate committee.

In announcing the plan Friday night, the President ordered Cox to make no further effort to obtain tapes or other presidential documents.

Cox responded that he could not comply with the President's instructions and elaborated on his refusal and vowed to pursue the tape recordings at a televised news conference yesterday.

On Nov. 17, 1973, less than a month after firing Cox, Nixon made his famous "I am not a crook" remark in Orlando: "[I]n all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice [...] People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

Orlando, Fla, Nov. 17 -- Declaring that "I am not a crook," President Nixon vigorously defended his record in the Watergate case tonight and said he had never profited from his public service.

"I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice," Mr. Nixon said.

"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

In an hour-long televised question-and-answer session with 400 Associated Press managing editors, Mr. Nixon was tense and sometimes misspoke. But he maintained his innocence in the Watergate case and promised to supply more details on his personal finances and more evidence from tapes and presidential documents.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

"You start whining before the game's even over, if whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else, then you don't have what it takes to be in this job." — Barack Obama

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Jean Paul (J.P.) Guillot is a lieutenant with the Miami Police Department. A quick internet search reveals he was suspended in 2013 for 160 hours and then fired in 2014. (Based on the Internal Affairs investigation, Sergeant Guillot was
Terminated for violation of Section 943.13(4), F.S., Violation of Moral Character Standards defined in Rule 11B-2700011, F.A.C. on 03/19/2014.) However, through arbitration, Guillot was able to win his job back and was somehow promoted to lieutenant in January of this year.

So what's Lt. Guillot been up to lately? We're not sure what his job is at MPD, but apparently he spends much of his time - occasionally into the early morning hours - trolling the Miami Herald's Facebook page and leaving comments on any posting having to do with the Republican party's racist and bigoted presidential nominee, Donald Trump. (Memo to Miami Police Internal Affairs: If you guys aren't too busy, perhaps you can find out if Guillot is trolling the Herald while on duty.)

Here's a sampling of Guillot's comments in which he appears to have problems with the Herald's "amateur journalism."

Memo to Lt. J.P. Guilllot: Actually, if you spent more time doing research and less time trolling, you'd learn that Trump, in fact, did admit to sexually assaulting women, which if I'm not mistaken is an arrestable offense. You tell me....you're the cop.

[Via the New York Times] In the three-minute recording, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Mr. Trump recounts to the television personality Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” how he once pursued a married woman and “moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there,” expressing regret that they did not have sex. But he brags of a special status with women: Because he was “a star,” he says, he could “grab them by the pu**y” whenever he wanted.
“You can do anything,” Mr. Trump says.
He also said he was compulsively drawn to kissing beautiful women “like a magnet” — “I don’t even wait” — and talked about plotting to seduce the married woman by taking her furniture shopping. Mr. Trump, who was 59 at the time he made the remarks, went on to disparage the woman, whom he did not name, saying, “I did try and f**k her. She was married,” and saying, “She’s now got the big phony tits and everything.”

Friday, October 14, 2016

“They know better, a lot of these folks who ran, and they didn’t say anything. And so they don’t get credit for, at the very last minute, when finally the guy they nominated and they endorsed and they supported is caught on tape saying things that no decent person would even think, much less say, much less brag about, much less laugh about or joke about, much less act on. You can’t wait until that finally happens and then say, ‘That’s too much, that’s enough,’ and think that somehow you are showing any kind of leadership and deserve to be elected to the United States Senate. You don’t get points for that.” [via]

Comment posted on the WPLG-Local 10's Facebook page accusing the station of making up the Hurricane Matthew loop model to boost ratings.

____________

Like every South Florida TV news anchor, Craig Stevens was on the air a lot yesterday.

Stevens, in his 26 years as a broadcast journalist in Florida, has covered quite a few hurricanes. Stevens tells me that he never paid much attention to hurricanes. But all that changed after Andrew, he says.

Stevens has two Facebook pages: one he calls his "work" page, and the other is personal...for friends only. His "work" page is for work, and his personal page is for fun...like keeping his friends updated on his never-ending quest to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

But like most TV news people, Stevens keeps his personal feelings and opinions to himself.

But last night was different. After spending all day anchoring coverage of Hurricane Matthew, Stevens posted this (below) after hearing from friends and colleagues that some viewers were complaining about the amount of coverage being given to Matthew.

99.9% of my posts on this my personal page are "fun"... BUT...tonight i have to acknowledge those who believe we (those of us in local media) covered #Matthew too much... as if b/c it wasn't a direct hit in Miami-Dade/Broward... we wasted your time.. or we made too much of it. Try telling that to the families of the 200+ the storm killed in Haiti (to say nothing of what we may find in the Bahamas & Cuba) ...or the countless lives about to be disrupted in Florida counties just to our north. For the most part the Natl Hurricane Center has been on point in their forecasts as have South Florida's meteorologists ALL of them (Channels 7, 6, 4, 10, 23 & 51) offering their best effort with the data they had to work with. As someone else here said, be grateful we largely avoided it, rather than complain you paid attention & took time to prepare. #publicservice

In a note to me Stevens wrote: "I NEVER soap box as you know.. but i feel strongly all of the stations are performing a public service ...spending hours - often without airing commercials.. to keep the community informed.."